Green Options

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Cambridge, Mass., is known for a lot of things—and now it can be known for going green, as well. Located at 1776 Mass. Ave. in Cambridge’s Porter Square, a year-old independent boutique specializing in eco-modern goods is garnering some attention.

The place is called Greenward. It’s popular. So popular that it made the Boston Magazine 2008 Best of Boston Home! list. Not bad for a new business in a major metropolitan area. The shop didn’t just make the cut to fill the token green business spot, either. It walks the walk.

It can be hard to find products with a conscience, and Greenward knows that. That’s part of the reason that they carry nearly anything you can conceive of that has gone green. If you need books, jewelry, bike accessories, stationery, homewares or magazines, Greenward’s got it. If you want clothes, notebooks, tables, candles or speakers…Greenward’s got it.

Liberal arts college Bowdoin College, located in Brunswick, Maine, recently announced that it will purchase green power from the 42-MW Mars Hill wind project. Owned by UPC Wind, the Northern Maine-based Mars Hill wind project will provide Bowdoin with renewable energy certificates (RECs) that will offset approximately 70% of campus electricity use over the next three years.

The voluntary REC purchases from UPC Wind will put Bowdoin at an impressive 100% green power usage level—well above the the requirements of Maine’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS).

“Our primary focus has been and will continue to be switching to lower carbon fuels and increased energy efficiency, but as we seek to become carbon neutral, purchasing offsets are a necessity,” explains S. Catherine Longley, Bowdoin’s Sr. V.P. for Finance and Administration & Treasurer and chair of the College’s climate commitment group. “We are excited that the Mars Hill wind project allows us to procure wind RECs locally.”

Of course, this isn’t Bowdoin’s first step toward a more ecologically responsible approach to the world. In 2006 the college signed the Maine Governor’s Carbon Challenge agreeing to reduce emissions to 11 percent below 2002 levels by 2010. They easily surpassed that goal in 2007.
Bowdoin also joined the EPA Green Power Partner Program in 2006, and the recent move to 100% green power ensures that they will remain in the EPA Program through 2010.

When the Internet extended its wiry tentacles to the small town that I grew up in, I had no idea what it was. I pictured it being a room full of wires and lights, like a super computer android version of a phone operator.

As I matured, I realized it wasn’t that at all, but a more mystic existence of floating pockets of digital information in constant flux, existing in digital clouds that were suspended just above the atmosphere.

Of course, neither of those images is or was correct. But as it turns out, I was closer to the target with my first guess. Massive server rooms take up space and energy all over the world, storing the information and websites we web junkies feed on for survival. Luckily, they are starting to go green.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a technology real estate company, has taken a bold step into the green world by renovating a 90-year-old printing facility in Chicago. They have turned the plant into the world’s first LEED gold-certified data center. Not only is this a paradigm shift for future data centers—it may change the way LEED building companies approach renovations.

Students in a horticultural technology class at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School for Applied Science completed a final project for last week’s Earth Day celebration that brings learning outside of the conventional classroom.

Associate professor Dana Sansom’s grounds management course installed sustainable landscaping around the university’s Putnam Hall, designed to provide low-maintenance beauty throughout the year. Additionally, the landscaped area will be used as a living classroom for the school’s future horticulture students.

Thompson School student Jim Lynn, who designed the landscape with students Henry Hess and Katie Leipold worked with nine other students over the course of the past year to develop and implement the project. The site, which had been largely neglected for a decade, was overgrown and unkempt.

Recycled cell phones as art.

Boston, Mass.—In yesterday’s Boston Globe, I came across an article in the Lifestyle/Green Living section that really caught my eye…and my ear. An art student from Allston, Mass. has an installation in Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) that consists entirely of discarded cellular phones.

Rob Pettit, 26, has been spending months collecting, sorting and arranging old cell phones, even using their ring tones and camera shots in some of his pieces.

“It’s just interesting to see what an explosion of products [this is], and realizing that every time you get one, it’s on the verge of being replaced by another,” Pettit told the Boston Globe. “There’s an estimated half a billion cellphones just sitting in people’s desk drawers.”

Green roof manufacturers incorporate sustainable products beyond the greenery.

If it looks green, smells green and feels green, it must be green. Right? The answer, it turns out, is more of a maybe. It is common knowledge that green technology has large positive environmental impacts: large-scale energy savings, run-off reduction and heat reduction among their chief assets. But as green builders continue to define the standards and guidelines for sustainable construction practices, different levels of earth friendly products continue to circulate the market. Green roofs in particular are taking a harder look at the sustainability of their component materials.

Make it last
Brad Budde of Conwed Plastics, Minneapolis, Minn., believes the future development of sustainable green roof products lies in the hands of builders. He suggests that as companies continue to understand the commercial concerns regarding the application of sustainable and earth friendly products that the market as a whole will become more educated about their applications, benefits and uses.

His company is a leader of earth friendly, compostible packaging materials as an alternative to traditional plastic bags, as well as biodegradable plastics that don’t leave the harmful, long lasting resins of other industry plastics. “It’s a really great product that solves some of the disposal concerns for traditional plastic products,” he says.

Providence, Rhode Island— The Ocean State might be the size of some counties in other parts of the country, but it’s big on going green. A local food co-op in Providence has been bringing fresh, local produce to its capital city dwellers for nigh on ten years now.

Urban greens is a food cooperative on Providence’s West Side with a mission to provide simple, direct access to affordable, local, natural products and to offer a community-based alternative to corporate supermarkets. The cooperative is guided by its values of equal access, local agriculture, local economy, co-operative principles, community partnerships and social entrepreneurship.